Ingenious Smugglers Lose More Than Wire In War Against Drugs

An unsmiling cop with a 12-gauge shotgun braced on his hip checked everyone`s identification tag at the warehouse door.

A newspaper photographer pointed a camera in his direction but was discouraged by a frown.

When Broward Sheriff Nick Navarro and two high-ranking U.S. Customs officials arrived on the scene, the waiting newspaper, radio and television reporters finally were allowed into the cavernous building in the 800 block of Northwest Fifth Avenue in Fort Lauderdale.

The train of media people was led past hundreds of confiscated bicycles, a pair of fancy sports cars and a sleek boat being held as evidence in pending cases by the Sheriff`s Office.

The reporters were met by a dozen grim-faced federal agents and sheriff`s deputies carrying machine guns and shotguns. They were riding herd on a giant cache of cocaine.

The coke, 5,500 pounds in all, was wrapped in hundreds of kilogram bags stacked six to 10 packages high in a semicircle that took up one end of the room.

A huge red spool that held electric conductor wire stood on end behind the stacked drugs. Seven other spools were stacked in a corner under a balcony that held still more confiscated bicycles. And there were other, smaller spools filled to the rim with wire taken from the larger spools.

The smugglers had been ingenious, the cops said.

They had built giant metal housings that were fitted inside the 1/2-foot spools. Real wire cable was wrapped around the center of the spool. The special drug container was fitted over that and more cable was wrapped around it.

From the outside, no one could tell the spools held anything but the wire that was listed on the Venezuelan container ship`s manifest when it docked at Port Everglades.

But the drug dealers didn`t figure on a customs agent at the port who pored over the ship`s documents and found something that didn`t sit right.

``It was strictly a gut feeling. Something you get with experience,`` said the agent, who asked not to be identified.

Acting on her hunch, ``Dawson,`` a black Labrador trained to sniff out drugs, found what he was looking for. Though the drugs were well hidden deep inside the wire spools, there was drug residue on the metal frames of the spools, agents said.

The drug bricks were heavily wrapped with plastic, tape and waterproof covering. A finger poked into them didn`t make a dent.

There was a news conference, praise for the cooperation between federal and county cops and a warning that the drug war continues.

This case, among the top 20 drug busts in history, officials said, cost the smugglers dearly. Three men were arrested.

And at $4,000 a pound -- $1,000 to grow and process the cocaine and $3,000 to ship it -- the cost to the smugglers was $22 million.

Most of the cocaine will be incinerated under heavy guard. The rest will be kept for evidence when the case goes to court.

The cop with the shotgun still stood at the door an hour later as the media circus disbanded. He was friendlier.

``You don`t have to sign out,`` he said.

-- Street Scene wants to know how crime affects you. If you have a story to tell, call Ardy Friedberg at 356-4531 or Kevin Davis at 356-4523.